I meet my sister. As long as we’re here,
I tell her, I might as well say it out loud—
I never liked you. You had a way
of looking on me in my distress.
You threatened calamity
when it seemed you might not
get your way. You don’t understand
what you’re doing, is what you’d say.
Oh, I remember it all, how you went
from room to room telling each one
the other said this, the other said that.
You knifed the couch, you knifed the chairs.
Be careful, you said.
Way down here
at the bottom of everything, everyone
has a knife, everyone has a way.
You keep talking, you keep saying
whatever it was you said. You
keep on, you don’t understand—
down here, at bottom, you’re dead.